April 2021

We have good reason to be optimistic! We are now enjoying some nice Spring weather, face to face gatherings are becoming more likely as the weather gets better and more people are vaccinated, and there is a ton of entrepreneurial activity in the HV, as is evident from the content of the newsletter below. We just completed our series of four Thursday sessions in Venture Fest - Spring ‘21, and there are 11 new events listed in the Events section below from April 8 through June 3. 

 

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Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurship Happenings in the Hudson Valley! This column includes a highly recommended article by Tony Fareed, 360accel, 10 Questions To Check Your Company’s Post-Pandemic Readiness, a recap of Venture Fest - Spring ‘21 held four Thursdays in March, and an invitation to join our first HV Venture Hub Book Club.

Tony Fareed, Founder, 360accel, (and good friend and supporter of the HV Venture Hub) has posted a very valuable resource on his website, titled 10 Questions To Check Your Company’s Post-Pandemic Readiness

Recap of Venture Fest - Spring 2021

 Venture Fest

Venture Fest - Spring '21 was a great way to bridge us from winter to spring while creating some energy in our entrepreneur ecosystem. Some highlights below:

  • See the full program at Venture Fest - Spring '21
  • We had 330 total participants over four weeks, 240 unique participants, average of 82 per session. The program was supported by 42 speakers, panelists, and founders who pitched, in addition to the SUNY New Paltz HV Venture Hub team. 
  • Venture Fest was generously supported by Presenting Sponsor, Kenneth Pasternak and the Pasternak Family Foundation, and our HV Venture Hub Annual Sponsors: Schwartz Heslin (David Dell), GCSEN Foundation (Mike Caslin), Upstate Capital (Noa Simons), and HV Startup Fund (Johnny LeHane). Special thanks to Dan and Cari Sommer for supporting our new HV Mentors program through the Sommer Family Foundation and their active role in shaping and supporting the program which was launched in our first Venture Fest session on March 4.

Venture Fest Recordings

Hudson Valley Venture Hub logo

 

HV Venture Hub Book Club Invitation

 

Please join us in the first of hopefully many Book Clubs: Thursday, April 29, 4:00 - 5:30pm. We will be discussing the book, The Startup Community Way, by Brad Feld, published in July 2020. Brad describes what is most important for nurturing a vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystem. 

 

Register Here

Investors 

Travel is an area where a post-pandemic return to “normal” seems less likely than a major shift in how the industry operates and how consumers behave. That backdrop makes the Hudson Valley Startup Fund’s recent investment in ViaHero particularly exciting.

ViaHero is a travel platform that delivers the service of a local travel agent. Travelers choose among many local “Heroes” who create a customized itinerary and guidebook based on the personal preferences of each traveler. 

The ViaHero model creates a marketplace for travelers to connect with locals in the regions that ViaHero covers. Locals are trained as “heroes,” learning how to create the maps and guidebooks for each trip as well as providing concierge-style service to the travelers. This allows travelers to change plans on the fly. 

Though questions remain about when global travel will be back at pre-pandemic levels, it seems likely that the demand for travel advice with an intimate, local component can only increase. Add the flexibility that concierge-style service provides and ViaHero is posed to take advantage of the pent-up demand created by 12 months of lockdowns and travel restrictions. 

 

Learn more about ViaHero on their website: https://www.viahero.com/.

Entrepreneurs and investors seeking more information on the HV Startup Fund can contact Andrew Schulkind, Managing Member, at info@hvstartupfund.com. 


For more information about HVSF, please visit our website at www.hvstartupfund.com.

Leaders

Sustainable Hudson Valley’s mission is to speed up, scale up, jazz up, and leverage progress against climate change, creating communities where people and nature thrive.  A small organization with a big network, SHV focuses on motivational strategies that help to break through the sense of overwhelm that people may feel about global issues and create a sense of empowerment through creative partnerships. We do this by focusing on cities, towns and villages – places that are small enough to impact yet big enough to matter.   

SHV has activated the clean energy marketplace through Solarize, Drive Electric and the Clean Power Guide as well as creating Marbletown’s 100% Renewable Energy Action Plan.  Inspired by Project Drawdown’s science-based catalogue of the top 100 climate solutions, SHV designs programs and conducts policy education in the areas of greatest opportunity -- including the un-glamorous greenhouse gases known as refrigerants, which can be more than 1,000 times as harmful as CO2.   

Its most substantial work now is leading on a Regional Climate Action Strategy to help achieve New York’s goals by organizing environmental, social justice and economic interests around a common action agenda.  Working groups are forming on carbon reduction and social benefits – including economic development – with participants including GCSEN and room for others to take part.  SHV believes that the economic development side of climate action planning is a rich, under-explored territory, with opportunities well beyond clean energy in transportation, materials management, agriculture and water solutions.   

Sustainable Hudson Valley is also a lead partner with GCSEN’s Evergreen Water Solutions Accelerator that will bring cohorts of high potential startup companies in the  water sector to the Hudson Valley to engage with the wealth of water experts and organizational  resources here. Each startup will have an innovative water solution in one of the following sectors: water infrastructure, water treatment, water and  energy, water testing, drinking water, wastewater, wastewater treatment, flooding &  drainage.

Service Providers

Moonfarmer is a Kingston-based creative digital studio specializing in handmade websites, software, and applications. Since 2003, we have collaborated with our clients and partners to produce meaningful work and bring new ideas to life. Our agile team consists of design and UX specialists, software developers, producers, and other consultants. Whether you’re building something new, or improving an existing product - we’ll guide you through every aspect of your journey.

Moonfarmer has been a proud member of the Hudson Valley community for over 17 years.  In addition to working with Fortune 500 companies like Samsung and UnitedHealth Group, Moonfarmer has partnered with local mission-driven nonprofits such as Radio Kingston and the Good Work Institute. Beyond our core business offerings, we use our technology skills to support important local events and organizations, and we actively work to foster a supportive tech ecosystem in the Hudson Valley through the Hudson Valley Tech Meetup.

Moonfarmer’s Co-Founder and Chief Creative Technologist Dan Stone is a longtime friend of the HV Venture Hub. His presentation at the 2019 Venture Fest provided insight to local entrepreneurs on best-practices for rapid app development. The helpful guide can now be reviewed on the Moonfarmer blog. For more content like this, make sure to subscribe to the Moonfarmer Newsletter. 

To learn more about Moonfarmer, visit our website www.moonfarmer.com or make contact at hello@moonfarmer.com.

Before Silicon Valley, The HV

The Mid-Hudson Discovered, Again.

In the mid to late 1800s, the Mid-Hudson region went from “where?” to where to be.

For rich and poor alike, Manhattan was over-crowded and unhealthy. Seventy-five miles north offered a healthy country environment, a prosperous economy, and open land. Immigrants and wealthy families moved up-river. A swell of cheap labor and capital flowed in. The land of Rip Van Winkle was waking up.

A Cinderella Story

The rising tide in population was a perfect fit for the arrival of industrial innovation. Fueling the changes were transportation, followed by business pioneers becoming entrepreneurs. Creative destruction was in the air. On the Hudson, wind-powered sloops saw the future in Livingston's steamboat (1807). On the Eastern shore, Matthew Vassar's Hudson River Railroad (1847) opened new regional markets. In the short span of fifty years, Poughkeepsie was crowned the Queen City of Industry. Home to the Google of its day, IBM. Now home to the man who made Google, Google.

Demographics are destiny - Austin Moskowitz

If you can see it, you can…

As the dawn of the 1800s was breaking, business pioneers were becoming entrepreneurs. They were envisioning ventures that did not exist, and said why not? They were brains and bricks business builders: IBM, Smith Brothers, Vassar, and the list goes on. And bygone businesses and brands that extended the Mid-Hudson economy west.

…do it.

John Adriance, Jr., a successful Poughkeepsie entrepreneur and Frederic Church, Hudson River School painter, Olana shared a vision. The future was western expansion, what became known as manifest destiny.

Mr. Adriance’s entrepreneurial vision was to supply farmers with innovative farm machinery. Mr. Church’s artistic vision was to draw people out of the cities, into nature using idealized images of the Mid-Hudson Valley and west.

 

Did they succeed? Mr. Adriance’s factory, now the site of Shadows in Poughkeepsie, employed 1,250 workers. He sold innovative farm machinery, as far away as Russia.

Source: Hudson River School (Wikipedia)

Mr. Church and his fellow Hudson River School artists excited an interest in moving to the Mid-Hudson and west. He went on to help found the first American fraternity of painters. His paintings and the Hudson River School painters are considered top-tier international artists.

This Before the Silicon Valley, the Hudson Valley blog offers a 400-year narrative journey honoring the icons of entrepreneurship and their impact on invention, innovation, and commercialization in the Hudson Valley. 

Don Delaney

Contact welcome: Donald J. Delaney, HV Entrepreneurship Historian & Blog Writer for the HV Venture Hub at SUNY New Paltz. You can reach Don at don@dondelaney.com

 

© Donald J. Delaney 2021

Events

Comments? Email Tony DiMarco at dimarcoa@newpaltz.edu